This invention relates generally to meter systems and methods, and more particularly to meter control and tamper protection systems and methods.
Utilities provide commodities such as electricity, gas, and water to the public, preferably at the least possible cost to each consumer. However, each year utilities are subject to increasing costs due to distribution losses. For example, many electrical utilities suffer significant and rising distribution costs year after year. The utilities are forced to pass these distribution losses along to the paying consumers. While certain amounts of electricity, gas, water, and other commodities are lost due to the technical limitations of the various distribution systems, large quantities of these commodities are stolen. The electrical and gas utilities refer to these losses as xe2x80x9cnon-technical distribution lossesxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cenergy theftxe2x80x9d. The various utilities typically write off these losses as unrecoverable due to a general lack of evidence available to prove energy theft. Unfortunately, such theft and losses have become an increasing problem for many utilities. For example, energy theft is becoming a major problem for electrical utilities across the globe, and the economic losses to electrical and gas utilities resulting from energy theft soars into the hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition to the commodities offered by energy utilities, any type of commodity that is measured by meters, such as oil, gasoline, and telephone services, can also be stolen.
Meter tampering is one form of theft (whether energy theft or theft of another commodity). One method of meter tampering is for a person to physically damage the meter or the lines surrounding the meter. For example, a person may remove one or more power line connections (for electrical energy meters), bypass the meter, or reverse the meter""s direction of operation. Another method of meter tampering is for a person to change the internal settings of the meter, such as by reprogramming the meter""s configuration parameters. Generally, in order for a person to reprogram a meter, the person must have access to the meter programming hardware and software and in some cases must have knowledge of the meter""s password. Due to the access and knowledge required to reprogram a meter, this type of meter tampering often involves the utility""s own personnel, which makes detecting and preventing the theft even more difficult.
Utilities are generally unable to determine and monitor the internal settings or configuration parameters of their meters without a utility employee being sent to each individual meter. Also, utilities are generally unable to store and access the internal settings or configuration parameters for each of their meters from a centralized location, such as a centralized database. Utilities also must send a utility employee to each individual meter in order to reprogram the meters to their default configuration parameters or to new configuration parameters. New configuration parameters may be required to implement changes to the costs of the commodity, seasonal changes, or new contractual agreements. However, if a utility employee must be sent to each meter in order to implement the changes to the meter""s configuration parameters, the utility cannot prevent the employee from tampering with the configuration parameters on behalf of a consumer.
Some utilities (such as electrical and gas utilities) often make agreements with corporations having facilities that use large quantities of energy. For example, an electric utility can make an agreement with a corporation so that the corporation""s facilities are required to use less power during peak times. Due to the agreement, more power is available for other consumers during peak times. The electric utility then sets the meters in the corporation""s facilities according to a time-of-use schedule in order to implement the agreement. However, the corporation""s employees or other individual may attempt to override the internal settings or configuration parameters of the meters in order to use more power during peak times (e.g., in order to increase the output of an air conditioning system, factory equipment, and the like). Before the meters in the corporation""s facilities are read by a meter reader or an automatic meter reading (AMR) system, the corporation""s employees can turn the meter back to the configuration parameters set by the electrical utility according to the agreement. Even though the electrical utility may be able to charge the corporation for the additional energy used in breach of the agreement, the energy will not be available to other consumers when needed during peak times.
In light of the problems and limitations described above, a need exists for a method and apparatus for remotely obtaining setting information of one or more meters, for detecting and preventing the theft of electricity, gas, water, and other commodities, for detecting meter tampering accomplished by changing the internal settings or configuration parameters of a meter, and for remotely changing one or more settings of a meter. A need also exists for detecting meter tampering quickly so that as little energy (or other commodity) as possible is lost or otherwise incorrectly measured. A further need exists for obtaining configuration parameters for meters and storing the configuration parameters in a centralized location. Each embodiment of the present invention achieves one or more of these results.
Some embodiments of the present invention provide a commodity meter management system including one or more commodity meters (e.g., electrical energy meters, gas meters, water meters, and the like), one or more servers, and a communications application to communicate between the meters and the servers. Each meter can initially be configured to operate according to one or more default configuration parameters, but at any given time, each meter operates according to actual configuration parameters, any of which can be different than the default configuration parameters. For energy meters, the configuration parameters can include transformer settings, scale factors, time-of-use or seasonal schedules, etc.
Each meter is preferably connected to at least one of several servers via any suitable communication medium. In some embodiments, each meter is connected to a server via one of several different types of communication mediums, and the meters are able to communicate with the servers over each of the different types of communication mediums simultaneously. For example, one meter can be connected to a server via a cellular network, while another meter can be connected to the same or another server in the system via a satellite network. In some embodiments, two or more meters can communicate simultaneously with the same server over the same or different networks. The servers are generally located remotely from the meters, such as at a utility""s facility a distance from the customer. The communications application is used to communicate remotely between the meters and the servers. The communications application preferably enables bi-directional communication in real time between the meters and the servers. Preferably, the communications application can determine the actual configuration parameters according to which the meter is operating at any given time.
In some embodiments, the commodity meter management system includes a database connected to the servers. The database preferably stores default configuration parameters for one or more of the meters. In order to detect theft of the commodity, the communications application preferably compares the actual configuration parameters to the default configuration parameters. If the actual and default configuration parameters are not equal, substantially equal or within a pre-determined threshold, the communications application preferably indicates that a tamper event has occurred. The communications application can also record that the tamper event has occurred and can create a tamper event message (such as in a tamper event log or history stored in a memory associated with the server) for use in preventing future thefts. The communications application can even take corrective action, such as to send a tamper event message to appropriate personnel who can be dispatched to check the meter.
In some embodiments, rather than dispatching personnel when a tamper event is indicated, the communications application resets the actual configuration parameters of the meter back to the default configuration parameters. Preferably, when the actual configuration parameters are reset to the default configuration parameters, the communications application records the time that the meter was reset and the location or identity of the meter so that theft activity can be tracked. In this matter, the theft can be quickly detected and further loss of the commodity can be prevented. In these and other embodiments, the communications application can change the actual configuration parameters to new configuration parameters, whether a tamper event has been indicated or not, thereby providing an amount of control over meter operations.
According to some methods of the invention, commodity meters are connected to one or more servers via a communication medium. The meters can be initially configured to operate according to one or more default configuration parameters preferably stored in a database. The servers communicate remotely with the meters in order to determine the actual configuration parameters according to which the meter is operating at any given time. Preferably, the actual and default configuration parameters are compared, (most preferably in real-time) and a tamper event is indicated if the actual and default configuration parameters are not equal to, substantially equal to, or within a predetermined threshold of one another. In some embodiments, when a tamper event is indicated, a tamper event message is created and used to dispatch personnel to check or service the meter. Also, in some embodiments the actual configuration parameter is automatically reset to the default configuration parameter. The time of the tamper event, the location of the meter being tampered with, and/or the identity of the meter tampered with can be recorded in order to track the theft activity. If desired, some embodiments of the present invention enable the actual configuration parameters to be changed to new configuration parameters.
Further objects and advantages of the present invention, together with the organization and manner of operation thereof, will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like elements have like numerals throughout the drawings.